Teenage mid-life crisis

In My Humble Opinion
41

Relax. Just a bit. That’s my advice.

I’m 47. I found my career. Or perhaps it found me.

I wanted to be……

A Pilot.

An architect.

A mechanical engineer.

An artist.

There was a stint there where I wanted to race motorcycles.

I was this >.< close to going to Antarctica for a basic labor job to support the scientists.

I didn’t take the job. One year later, I met my Wife to be at a freaking rodeo . Ya just never know.

Turns out that I’m a GIS programmer. What a strange trip it’s been.

Things change. Be happy.

42

No.

Quite the opposite. Brilliant means you are capable of catching the mistakes, knowing the flaws, seeing the downside of life, being able to figure out just how fucked up the world is. It’s the fat dumb people who get the third part of that troika: Happy.

In daily life, being intelligent often means jack shit.

Being smarter than your boss can be a serious negative. People in power are not there because they’re smart. They’re often there for reasons that don’t make a lot of sense. But damnation, they’re not going to let some smartassed subordinate tell them anything! Sometimes it’s like the WWI trenches, where you know damned well you’re walking into machine gun fire and everyone is doomed, but fuckall if you can tell your boss anything! So despite everything, you march straight into the fire, let the project be blown to bits, and bite your tongue in silence over “what went wrong” (because if you open your mouth, you’ll get burned - personal experience talking there!)

Seriously;

Like others have said, work on finding what makes you happy. Do that, do those things, be that person.

43

I think that’s a misstatement. There are plenty of dumb people out there who are miserable because they make uninformed choices that are mostly harmful or counterproductive. There are plenty of brilliant people out there who are perfectly happy because they like what they’re doing in life and have the maturity to understand that the world is not perfect.

Being brilliant is nothing but a powerful means to an end, provided that you have an end in mind. A brilliant person without goals does nothing except brilliantly waste time while looking at the accomplishments of others, thinking “I could have done that better.”

44

People are either too serious or so funny. Or they are just ridiculous. :rolleyes:

45

I mean… part of me is thinking, I don’t want to do this academic malarkey anymore… but I don’t want it to be like a really rash decision.

46

Well, if you don’t want to do this academic malarkey, maybe there is some other academic malarkey you’d like to do. :slight_smile:

Seriously, is there another school you’d like to go to, or course you’d like to take? I’m a little intrigued by this, from your OP:

It sounds to me like you’re either under pressure from your family to do well at this school, or you feel you’re under pressure from your family to do well at this school. I’d like to be able to tell you that family pressure shouldn’t factor into how you see yourself at school, but that wouldn’t help matters much; family pressure is a fact of student life for many. What I will say is that if you can, don’t allow family pressure to overwhelm you. Yes, you may see it as a Sword of Damocles, but if you can ignore it (at least, for now), you just might find that freed of the pressure, you enjoy your studies more, and in enjoying them, do well at them.

Perhaps there is another school (not necessarily a university) where you would enjoy what you’re doing, and do well at it–certainly, well enough that you’d get that good job in media/advertising/PR. What is it about these fields that interests you? If you can narrow your interest down, you might see a place where you could get a better education than a university. For example, if you were to say, “I want to be a commercial design artist, doing layouts for print advertisements,” then I’d say that you might be better off at an art school than a university.

Incidentally, I get the feeling from certain words and phrases you’re using (for example, “whilst” and “uni”) that you’re not in North America. Perhaps if we knew where you were, some Dopers more local to you might be able to provide a little more insight as to what schools and courses leading to your goal are available in your location.

47

Its not always exciting,sometimes its a long haul so you’ve just got to stick with it.

I suspect that many of your fellow students who you feel inadequate to are in private going through the same self doubt as you are but are hiding it in public.

In time those people are likely to become your best and lifelong friends but like the rest of college life it will take time.

Some of the shooting stars will flash across the sky and then disappear from sight but you’ll probably see more then a few plodders make it to the end.
If you find your self brooding put some work in and kill two birds with one stone.

Good luck mate I envy you.

48

Impressive deduction Spoons, what is conspicuous about “whilst”? This is irrelevant but one thing no-one picked up is that I’m a girl. Just thought I’d throw that out there…

49

Are you thinking that maybe it IS relevant, Grathania? Or to put my question another way, why do you say it’s irrelevant?

50

I had an intuition that you were a girl.

51

I thought you was a girl all along. I also thought you were in North America, so I guess I got that wrong, though.

52

Well I thought gender would be irrelevant as the advice given here has been neutral :slight_smile:

53

You do not have a destiny.
You do not owe anything to anyone, except for student loans.
You are not responsible for your parents’ expectations.
You are not responsible for meeting your parents’ expectations.
‘Failure’ is giving up on YOUR goals, not anyone else’s goals for you.

You sound like you haven’t found your goals yet, and you are carrying around the burden of your family expectations. That’s too bad, but very common.

How to get out of it is something that will be unique to you. I can’t really offer any advice on that, except to know that it is a stage that will pass as you mature. IF you mature. :stuck_out_tongue:

54

I wasn’t thinking of you as a boy or a girl really, I guess, 'cause I didn’t know.

Anyway, “whilst” is not a word Americans use. I don’t think Canadians do much either. It sounds sort of quaint and adorable to us.

No, brilliance does not make you happy! I have known so many brilliant people who were miserable, I can’t even tell you. Happiness lies (partially) in doing what you love and not worrying about whether you’re the best at it. You aren’t the best, because someone else is always going to be better. So what? Do your best and enjoy the ride.

(Stupid example: I can’t swim particularly well, but I enjoy swimming, so I swim. It makes me happy to swim, but I would never qualify for any sort of team or anything, much less win a medal. I’m sure my more athletic friends would look at me with pity. So I don’t swim with them. ;))

On a more relevant topic, I got into a prestigious university by the skin of my teeth and because I had done some rather unusual things. I was nowhere near as brilliant as most of my classmates, and I knew it well. In many ways, that was a blessing for me–I had no pressure and I was happy with reasonable grades, while my friends went into agonies if they got a less-than-perfect mark in anything. I had never been you, the smartest kid who had never had to try, and as a result I could enjoy my classes.

If you can learn to try new things out and enjoy them even though you’re no good at them, you will be ahead of a lot of people. Same with learning to enjoy the ride, do what you love, and stop worrying about whether you’re the best at it or not. And read even sven’s advice again.

55

As has been said, it’s not a word Americans use, and I can confirm that Canadians don’t use it either. But it is in use in other parts of the English-speaking world–I taught college-level writing for a number of years in Canada, and my immigrant students from the UK, India, Hong Kong, Australia, and New Zealand would use it frequently. And correctly too, I might add, though I had to caution them that it was not generally used in North America.

As for “uni” for “university,” I’ve heard that mainly (though not always) from Australian and New Zealander folks, so I’m thinking there’s a good chance that you’re from one of those two places. Would I be correct?

56

I’ll tell you another story:

Back when I was 19, I heard a story about a guy who collected cards he found on the street. After his whole life, he had just completed the pack. I thought this was the neatest thing I had ever heard of- a little lifetime quest. And a cool way to remember where you have been. I figured I’d start doing it, too.

But I’d just been on a backpacking trip in Europe. I thought of all of the cards I’d passed up. I thought of all the places I’d probably never visit again. I figured it was too late for me to start.

And I kept thinking that as I passed up a card in an African monkey market or Honduran prison or Nepali rebel camp. Each time I’d see a card I’d get a little sad at how I had never started collecting them, at how I’d missed so many chances. A tiny little dream that died before it could even get started.

And then one day I was walking down an ally by my house in Cameroon and I saw a card. I got that little pang, that little parade of flashbacks to all the times in my life I havn’t picked up cards. And it dawned on me- those un-picked-up wern’t missed opportunities! That was my life! And a pretty damn fun one at that. I look back at 19 year old me, thinking that a end-of-high-school Eurail trip was going to be my one big chance to travel. How little I knew!

Now, whenever I see a card on the street, I get a little smile on my face. I think about how unpredicatable life is. And how dreams really do come true- but it happens in ways that we could have never worked out beforehand. I think back to all those passed-up cards. How fortunate I am to have had so many “missed opportunities.” How it’s the experience (being there) and not the result (having the card) that matter. And I think in awed wonder about what cards I’m going to see in the future, how I will never be able to even guess.

57

What the hell is a card? Is that a post card or something else?

Anyway, OP, if you’re a girl, I don’t know why you’re so hung up on the sexuality part. You’re a girl! Everyone likes a lesbian! I’m only half-joking…what I mean is, pretty much no one is going to care how you come out, so you don’t need to worry about it. Do what you want with whoever you want.

58

I read that as a playing card, and that the guy had completed a 52 card deck over the course of his life.

59

Oh…With all the drama and music and “trying to figure out my sexuality” stuff I figured you to be a gay dude.

I think it depends. With greater ability comes greater ambition and expectations. It also becomes more competetive and harder to reach those goals. Think about it this way. Who feels worse about not making the Olympic team? A fairly average athlete like most people or the guy who just misses qualifying?
Also you mentioned a career in PR/Advertising. I wouldn’t look to a career in corporate America to find you fullfillment or purpose unless your goal is simply to make money. I find it sad that so many people believe the epitome of achievement is to work for an investment bank or law firm or Fortune 500 company. What you will often see are these hypercomeptetive kids who bust their ass studying so they can get all A+s and work for a private equity hedge fund or something. And then they jump off their 5th story dorm window when they get a B+ because they think their life is over. While it’s nice to have a lot of money, I hope there is more to life than just working 100 hours a week for some demanding asshole.

60

Two short stories/examples;

Years ago I worked for a “demanding asshole” whose dream in life was to make it to Director before he turned 30. He was a couple of months younger than me. He worked 80+ hours a week and expected the rest of us would do likewise. He once called each of us into his office one at a time to ask us to work 50 hours a week “just to prove ourselves”. He was extremely unhappy with my “25% more hours, 25% more pay” philosophy. The man had his own house, a boat and two vehicles, but otherwise he was pretty much alone in life.

This is the man who deliberately kept our unit out of an All IT Picnic, without telling us in advance, by pulling us all into a conference room one hour before the picnic, than spending THREE FUCKING HOURS slowly and laboriously walking through a handout he had created. Now that’s Epic level Douchebaggery.

He didn’t make Director before he turned 30. Partly because he wasn’t willing to look outside our rather small company, partly because he was such a dick.
About 10 years later at another company, I got a new boss. A 26 year old punk with a lot of ambition. He too worked 80+ hours a week and seemed to have no concept of a personal life or personal time, expecting the same out of the rest of us. However, this yutz had a wife, a new baby, and she was pregnant with his second child.

Shortly before I left, we came to blows over his casual expectation that he could simply require us to cancel our weekends, our family events, even long-planned vacations, in order to work on things that were not emergencies. And he was doing this every single week throughout the summer (in Minnesota), usually telling us Thursday morning to cancel our weekend plans.

When I left, I told him: One day you’re going to wake up to find that you’re my age (I was 39 at the time) and your wife is divorcing you. You’re going to have teen-aged kids who don’t even know who you are. You’re going to end up alone and confused, not even knowing why it all happened. But it’s going to happen because you put Work above everything else in your life.

That man made Director (of another company) at age 27. But he’s still going to end up losing his family in the end, because his job is more important to him.